Weapons that will help speed up military special operations
We will not be talking about classic complex and expensive systems (airplanes, Tanks, howitzers, ships, etc.), but about those weapons that can be modified, tested, produced in the required quantity, or even created from scratch within a few months. They can complement and raise to a new level the already existing main types of weapons for current and future conflicts. In addition, they will significantly accelerate the collapse of the Ukrainian army and the advance of the front to the western borders of Ukraine. They will also allow us to quickly achieve multiple superiority in the combat potential of Russian troops in the Northern Military District zone and minimize our losses.
When discussing modern weapons that can significantly influence the situation at the front, it is important to evaluate not only the quality of individual samples, but also the quantity of these samples on the scale of a group of troops (ours and the enemy), the length of the front, and the intensity of combat operations. In addition, the simultaneous development of all types of weapons in all branches of the military is important. Otherwise, we risk stepping on the rake of Ukrainian society, which is constantly fed new “wunderwaffles”, not paying attention to the fact that the previous “silver bullets” had no effect on the situation.
In this case, an important nuance must be taken into account.
A million shells fired in a week can have many times the effect of the same number of shells fired over 3 months. Moreover, 50 thousand high-precision projectiles can be more effective than a million conventional ones. A strong fire attack with an emphasis on the qualitative superiority of weapons in a short period of time can cause the collapse of the enemy’s defenses, destabilizing the supply structure of the front, will not give the enemy the opportunity to adapt to the onslaught and will ultimately lead to a chaotic flight.
Therefore, we cannot escape the need for large-scale strategic offensive actions with a manifold increase in firepower compared to the current situation at the front. The more new innovative weapons will be used in intensive offensive operations - the less human and material and technical resources will be required to end the war as a whole.
Russia is not interested in a long war of attrition, since, unlike the West, the fighting takes place on Russian territory and in its immediate vicinity, Russian military personnel and Russian citizens suffer.
For the West, first of all, “cheap cannon fodder” from Ukraine and part of NATO arsenals are consumed. Moreover, the latter only provides a reason for defense companies to cut up the budget under the pretext of the “Russian threat.” Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the air defense system due to comprehensive technological superiority over the enemy, without resorting to a quantitative superiority in manpower.
If the enemy, for example, decides to increase the production of 155-mm ammunition, then in the absence of the possibility of completely cutting off supplies or destroying production facilities, it is necessary to increase high-precision fire destruction of rear depots and howitzers themselves. But under no circumstances wait until the enemy uses all the shells. This is how a qualitative leap in Russian armaments should reverse the state of war of attrition with the West.
With the help of new technologies, the entire nature of the air defense system should radically change: from a predominantly ground war, where most of the fire damage to the enemy is inflicted by low-precision weapons, to a war where high-precision weapons systems will play a key role in inflicting fire damage, aviation and unmanned partially autonomous systems.
UAV
FPVDrones- short-range kamikaze.
This type of UAV has received its well-deserved fame and is displacing conventional copters with grenades and VOGs from leadership positions at the forefront, gradually becoming an alternative to artillery for working with armored vehicles, vehicles, manpower and not very deep fortifications. First of all, due to its speed, maneuverability, targeting accuracy, the ability to fly between trees and even indoors, and the amount of explosives delivered.
Currently the production of FPV-drones in Russia is 100 thousand per month, which in terms of the length of the active front line is 3 drones per kilometer of front per day. Considering that most small FPV quadcopters do not reach their target, the number of 100 thousand per month is still insufficient.
The next stages in the development of this type of weapon concern both the qualitative characteristics of the drones themselves (increasing their range, quality of communication with the operator, cameras), and their automation, as well as the creation of universal launchers for launching a swarm.
Work on this is already underway, both for factory-made attack UAVs of the “Izdeliye 53” type, and for cheap “basement” FPVs. However, in the cemeteries of burnt Ukrainian armored vehicles there is not yet a single column that has been completely destroyed by a swarm of autonomous drones.
One of the modifications of FPV drones could be the creation compact version of a foldable quadcopter with explosives for manual launch without a launch pad and without preliminary preparation for use instead of grenades by assault troops in extremely extreme conditions.
When we mention the word “swarm”, we need to develop clear criteria for this concept. Most experts associate the word “swarm” simply with a large number of drones in the air.
But are dozens of UAVs launched simultaneously at programmed coordinates and with a programmed flight path (“Gerani”) a swarm?
Are dozens of UAVs launched simultaneously, but with individual operator control for each of them (small FPVs, Lancets)?
Or is a swarm a large number of fully autonomous drones that independently find the target they need and are partially, if possible, controlled by only one operator on the principle of confirming/rejecting a strike?
If we talk about UAVs in general, then free hunting with the help of drones will certainly remain, but should act as an additional factor.
The next stage is not only to achieve saturation of the front with all types of UAVs, but also building a centralized drone control system, data exchange, fire strikes with maximum automation and real-time data consolidation into a single control center located deep in the rear.
In this case, the system must be able to have local access to use its individual elements for command posts at the front or for individual soldiers in a given area. It will consist of various UAVs: from tiny quadcopters to operational-tactical and strategic drones, which will form a round-the-clock, multi-echelon, predominantly autonomous front, hanging over the enemy to prevent him from raising his head even in the face of electronic warfare.
The more UAVs there are at the front, the more advanced should be the autonomous algorithms for their movement, enemy recognition (including those camouflaged by indirect signs), terrain orientation, methods of autonomous attack, emergency prevention, mining and demining, maneuvering under heavy fire, automatic replacement of retired elements, redistribution of targets (when the electronic warfare situation allows this), assessment of damage caused to the enemy.
Unmanned systems will inevitably learn to accompany and deliver military cargo, guard designated objects, and set up ambushes behind enemy lines. A 24-hour aerial unmanned swarm can be used both on the front line and in the rear, covering important strategic facilities and supply columns.
Ultimately, military conflicts in the 21st century will come to the point where the main fire damage will be inflicted by some unmanned systems on other unmanned systems, and in most cases with minimal or no operator participation.
One can only guess whether this will happen in the Ukrainian theater of military operations or a little later. However, there is definitely a trend.
A swarm along the front line is good, but even better swarm behind enemy lines.
A promising direction for the development of tiny copters could be their use for a swarm attack in the rear, delivering them to the rear with the help of a larger drone and through it providing communication with operators (or an independent search for a target). In the rear, the enemy does not use thorough camouflage for armored vehicles and is more vulnerable to automatic target identification systems.
Jet UAVs will find application both on the front line and behind enemy lines. Their characteristic feature is speed. Even relatively small aircraft-type UAVs with a wingspan of 1,5 meters can be accelerated from 400 to 700 km/h. This makes their speed characteristics equal to those of cruise missiles.
At the same time, a jet UAV will be much more maneuverable than a missile launcher, more inconspicuous and launched from any point on the front, without requiring a bulky carrier, without giving away the launch site with a smoke trail and a flash from the starting engine. Such drones have already been used by the Ukrainian regime, and there are also many developments in Russia.
Initially, loitering munitions or kamikaze drones could be divided into 3 groups: long-range (Geraniums), medium-range (Lancets and Cubes), short-range (FPV copters).
Increased flight range "Lancets" up to 70 km gradually erases the boundary between medium- and long-range UAVs. The ability to hit moving objects in the deep rear makes them necessary for hunting convoys of equipment, echelons (including the military-political leadership of the Kyiv regime), as well as aviation, quickly deployed enemy air defense systems and MLRS.
Long-range UAVs will soon join "Italmas". It will be very useful if it also receives a camera and has the ability to manually control the final part of the flight (or automatically identify the target). Then the radius of destruction of mobile and highly mobile objects increases to 200 km.
A camera and highly efficient manual/automatic control at the final stage of flight can be obtained by new versions of "Geraniums", which will allow them to approach the Israeli “Harup” in their capabilities.
In addition to the main camera, long-range UAVs can be equipped with side night vision cameras. This will make it possible to identify sites where anti-aircraft missiles are launched at them at night from a distance of several tens of kilometers. In a group attack, some of the drones can be immediately redirected to the missile launch site. Or the next group of drones and missiles will strike there.
At the moment, the fact of an experiment with the use of “Geranium” with a conventional camera to record missile launches has already been recorded.
The need for long-range drones that can reach any point in Ukraine amounts to hundreds every day (warehouses, equipment accumulations, above-ground command centers, personnel deployment sites, training grounds, places of production and repair of military equipment and ammunition). The plant, built in Kazan, with a capacity of 6 Geraniums per year, currently provides a long-range fire potential of 000 kamikazes per day.
The most underrated type of remotely controlled systems in a predominantly ground war, oddly enough, are ground Robots. Remotely controlled armored vehicles, unlike people, is not susceptible to shell shock and cannot be disabled by a slight shrapnel wound, which makes it effective in the most dangerous areas and will allow it to be used during assault operations to clear the way for personnel, suppressing the enemy with dense fire and at the same time clearing mines .
If the production capacity of Russian factories now prioritizes conventional armored vehicles with a crew, and it is not possible to produce tracked chassis for armored robots in large quantities, then how to explain the lack of mass production stationary remote-controlled machine gun or ATGM turrets?
Such systems, in the most mobile version, would replace soldiers in fortifications at permanent firing points and would be able to operate even during heavy artillery fire, pinning the enemy to the ground and not allowing them to approach the position while the personnel are deep underground.
From foreign examples, I remember the turrets of the Israeli company Smart Shooter, weighing 25 kg, intended for the use of various types of small arms, which are simply inserted into the installation. After use, the machine gun can be pulled out and continued to be used by a person to solve more complex combat missions.
At the moment, only robots for mining and demining, robots for evacuating the wounded have been noted at the front, and the other day there was evidence of the use by Russian troops of robotic tracked platforms with AGS-17 in the Berdychi area.
Over time, completely unmanned groups of military equipment will be able to not only occupy, clear, but also hold the occupied lines. This requires thousands of units of unmanned armored vehicles and thousands of units of stationary turrets.
Another area of application of unmanned technology concerns support troops. Given the size of the logistics network in this war, it makes sense to create unmanned, or partially unmanned support columns. This frees up personnel to tackle more complex tasks.
Partially unmanned means having a human-controlled vehicle at the head of the convoy, followed by unmanned transporters. These technologies have already been created in many countries of the world, including ours. The same KamAZ is testing similar systems. And the army clearly needs them.
Today, among maritime unmanned systems, all attention is focused on disposable boats with explosives. This is true if the targets are large enemy ships, stationary military and infrastructure facilities. But the concepts were completely forgotten unmanned boats armed with anti-tank systems and a machine gun. These boats could effectively fight both enemy landing groups on the Dnieper and near the Crimea, as well as kamikaze boats.
Such patrol boats can be equipped with launch containers for attack UAVs or a platform for the reusable use of a reconnaissance drone. Then they will be able to carry out raids on enemy infrastructure at a distance of 5-10 km from the coast (for example, in Nikolaev or Odessa) using small kamikaze drones, or they can increase this range to 40 km by installing containers with Product 53.
At the moment, we can observe an attempt to use BECs with MLRS by the Kyiv regime in the vicinity of Sevastopol, but the military effectiveness of such strikes on land is extremely low in comparison with the use of ATGMs and attack UAVs on them.
If you give free rein to your imagination, the next step for classic unmanned boats with explosives may be the creation surface drone, which is thrown into the desired water area by a cruise missile and after descending onto the water surface by parachute, he can calmly approach the support of the bridge on the Dnieper.
A direct analogue of this is the “Otvet” complex based on the 91R1 missiles of the “Caliber” family, which throws a torpedo into a given area. And it can also be adapted to hit the underwater part of bridge supports.
Based on Ukraine’s experience of using Bayraktars, it became clear that large reconnaissance and attack drones such as “Orion” / “Pacer”, “Altius”, “Hunter”, like aircraft, cannot penetrate behind enemy lines and operate freely over the LBS itself, being an expensive and easy target for air defense. But in this war, these UAVs can be used over the sea surface as excellent hunters for BECs and sabotage boats.
In this case, they must be equipped with radar. In conjunction with helicopters and patrol aircraft equipped with radar, large reconnaissance and strike UAVs can form the main long-range echelon of the fight against unmanned enemy boats in the Black Sea, freeing up manned combat aircraft to solve problems directly at the front.
UAV protection
The more autonomous UAVs are, the greater the need to use firepower against them.
Drones have made anti-aircraft guns useful again in the modern theater of war. Russian copy rapid-fire multi-barreled machine guns An M134 Minigun, XM214 Microgun or Iranian Moharram on a robotic turret with optics and radar, standing, for example, on a Tiger chassis or on the roof of a building in the form of a stationary turret, is able to nullify an attack by a swarm of copters.
The small caliber (5.45, 7.62, 12.7) will make the installation light enough to be placed on a car chassis or as a portable turret, and the rate of fire of the six-barreled guns maximizes the likelihood of hitting a fast maneuverable target. In addition, such an anti-aircraft installation is also suitable for fighting enemy infantry if necessary.
Rapid-fire small-caliber machine guns can easily deal with unmanned boats. Since the hulls of such boats are not far from cardboard in density, then to destroy them, even such calibers will be enough to work within a range of up to 1,5 km from the ship.
You can place quite a lot of small-caliber six-barreled guns on a ship, and they will well complement the work of large six-barreled guns such as the AK-630 and AK-630-2, which will be busy working on more distant targets. The Iranians have already installed rapid-fire automatic turrets along the perimeter of the deck of the Shahid Mahdavi floating base.
In general, rapid-fire systems of various calibers (including 30-mm “Duets”) would also be useful for guarding ports or, for example, the Crimean Bridge, in the form of stationary turrets.
Separately, it should be noted that there is a demand for installing rapid-fire guns on landing and patrol ships.
The large-caliber pinnacle of the evolution of Russian anti-aircraft guns was "Deriviation-SV". Its key feature in the fight against UAVs and missiles is remotely detonated and programmable projectiles, which during the flight are detonated directly near the target, and do not fly further. The same principle is implemented in the German Skynex air defense for 35-mm shells, and today it should be implemented in other anti-aircraft calibers of 30 mm and 23 mm, widely used at the front.
It would not be amiss to remember about the larger caliber 100 mm. Programmable projectiles open up the prospect of destroying any modern fighter at altitudes of up to 15 km with a few shots and will make it possible to close the sky over a protected object from attacks by unguided aerial bombs or JDAM. In this conflict, 100-mm anti-aircraft guns are unlikely to be useful, since Ukrainian aviation does not fly over the LBS, but they will be in demand to cover Russian bases abroad and the bases of Russian allies from NATO aircraft.
The need for the above-mentioned anti-aircraft systems of various types at the front is estimated in thousands of units, while in the rear - from several units to several dozen for each large military or strategic facility. It will be easier to make stationary anti-aircraft turrets in the rear autonomous, combine them into a single fire control system and conveniently distribute firing sectors near the protected object.
It is known that any drones are quite easily shot down at close range from conventional shotguns with small pellets (up to 50 meters). Against this background, in addition to individual electronic warfare installations (which are already being implemented) and compact radars, signal detectors, each unit of armored vehicles can be equipped with an automatic barrelless anti-aircraft system that throws numerous small fragments in the direction of the UAV according to the principle shot cartridge.
In other words, lightweight anti-drone KAZ, which will not take up much space on a combat vehicle (certainly less than an anti-aircraft gun). Such a complex will have to be installed on almost all armored vehicles and vehicles.
Another way to protect yourself from UAVs is to use combat lasers.
A laser installation of several tens of kilowatts is enough to burn not only optics and electronics, but also ignite the body, cause overheating of engines, detonation of explosives or fuel (if any), at a distance of several kilometers.
The Americans were able to fit a 50-kilowatt DE M-SHORAD laser onto the Striker chassis and are already receiving the first samples for service. In Russia, in addition to the large Peresvet combat laser used for strategic missions, the Zadira-16 complex was created, which is more suitable for the needs of the Northern Military District and will be able to hit enemy UAVs at a distance of up to 5 km.
In the future, lasers will even be placed on armored vehicles, but for now, within the framework of the SVO, such installations will be needed primarily in order to secure the most important stationary objects in the rear, as well as ships.
This technology has a lot of room for development, taking into account how quickly the capacity of modern batteries increases (where it is not possible to use a power plant) and as laser diode production technology becomes cheaper.
Another cheap and effective way to combat enemy UAVs is fast, highly maneuverable interceptor drones, operating in fully automatic mode after launch from a launcher in a close combat situation, or guided by radar or laser illumination at long distances. We saw a lot of footage at the front when skilled UAV operators shot down enemy copters with rams.
Now it's time to turn this into an autonomous air defense system that receives data from a small radar and launches interceptor drones from a launch canister.
Such a system can act either as a stand-alone installation with its own radar, or as an additional launcher for traditional air defense systems. Pantsirs already have tiny missiles to intercept UAVs, but they will not be able to shoot down targets a few meters from the complex, unlike interceptor drones.
The United States has created the Raytheon Coyote system, which uses a drone instead of air defense missiles. Iran also developed a similar interceptor drone, the Object 358, which was demonstrated to Sergei Shoigu during his trip to this country. But both systems are designed rather for cheaper destruction of low-speed targets at long distances.
To intercept very tiny FPVs at close ranges, you will need an equally small interceptor drone. The minimum distance to destroy objects should be only a few meters from the launcher (if the interceptor UAV is already in the air by the time the weapon approaches).
Modern civilian quadcopters have obstacle sensors. The same principle, together with visual means of observation, can be used in the opposite direction for interceptors to independently detect and destroy foreign objects in the air without illumination from a ground installation. Something similar is proposed in the anti-drone system from MARSS.
The number of such systems in the Northern Military District should be in the thousands, due to the length of the line of combat contact.
Oddly enough, a system that uses interceptor drones instead of missiles will also be effective on water. A swarm of interceptor drones with automatic target detection and acquisition would be very effective in repelling attacks by unmanned boats near a ship.
Foreign objects on the water surface are easily detected by the program. Some of the BEC interceptor drones can be equipped with a thermal imaging camera for operation in night and foggy conditions.
To defeat underwater drones, a system with a sonar and anti-torpedoes will be required. Russia already has an M-15 anti-torpedo complex "Packet-NK", but a miniature version of the torpedo or a small underwater drone may be required to reduce the size of the launcher, since it will have to be placed even on small patrol boats and small missiles. It can also be stationary to protect berths.
Precision weapons
The nature of the fighting in Ukraine has shown a radical need to increase the share of precision-guided ammunition for artillery and MLRS, which still remain the main means of fire destruction.
О "Krasnopoliah" we heard a lot. They performed well in Syria and Ukraine. In SVO we are talking primarily about artillery warfare, and a large number of conventional artillery strikes is fraught with a large number of mistakes with civilian casualties. High-precision ammunition replaces several dozen conventional ones, eliminates accidental casualties, the need for sighting shots and, accordingly, deprives the enemy of the opportunity to escape or take cover after sighting shots.
At the moment, the range of the Krasnopols is limited to 26 km, they have the ability to be guided by the coordinates of a satellite navigation system, and the development of new types of Krasnopols continues. The start of mass production of the Coalition-SV requires the appearance of the Krasnopol modification “D” with a range of 70–80 km.
The number of “Krasnopols”, “Whale catchers”, “Granya”, “Daredevils”, “Sanitmeters” should be such that the RF Armed Forces completely abandon the use of conventional artillery ammunition within large populated areas or even near them (for example, within 500 –1 meters from residential buildings). We understand that the Ukrainian regime will not always and everywhere organize mass forced evacuation, and there are always people who do not leave their homes under any circumstances.
The same applies to high-precision missiles for MLRS.
A salvo of MLRS with conventional ammunition in normal mode has a spread of hits from several hundred meters to several kilometers (for a Smerch salvo) at maximum distance.
Considering that the Russian army uses 10-60 thousand artillery ammunition and MLRS missiles every day, hundreds or even thousands of precision-guided ammunition will be required daily to replace them or reduce their consumption in densely populated areas.
It is important to develop a salvo nature of the use of laser-guided precision munitions so that it is possible to destroy several objects simultaneously. This requires fairly compact laser target designation systems for simultaneous illumination of several targets at once from one drone or one portable target designator with automatic target acquisition and hold function.
Moreover, we should be talking about drones intended for launch in field conditions (“Eagles”, large multicopters). That is, such a gyro-stabilized platform with a laser target should be light in weight.
Thus, with such a laser center, an artillery battery with high-precision projectiles, or one howitzer in fire barrage mode, destroys several targets (even moving ones) at once. The same is with the Tornado-G, Tornado-S MLRS and promising projectiles that have a laser guidance system. The use of several high-precision shells at the same time will not allow the rest of the enemy armored vehicle column to escape from the attack after the first fire defeat.
The presence of wandering enemy air defense systems showed the need for mass production of gliding precision-guided munitions. The range of use of 60–70 km from high altitudes makes it impossible to reach the carrier using short- and medium-range air defense systems, including from Bukovs, NASAMS, IRIS-T, located near the line of combat contact.
With new versions of the UMPC with an engine, the range can reach up to 100 km. Further modifications to glide bombs could be in the direction of both increasing their accuracy and their range. The latter may require the production of entire glide ammunition, and not just the modernization of the glide module for classic FABs and the addition of an engine.
Another direction in modernizing the family of gliding bombs is the variety of their calibers and combat filling.
In addition to 250-kg, 500-kg, 1-kg and 500-kg, 3-kg, 000-kg and even 100-kg models may appear en masse at the front. Small-caliber glide bombs make it possible to minimize environmental damage from targeted strikes in urban environments and use them to destroy vehicles, armored vehicles, and individual firing points. Volume-detonating gliding bombs, on the contrary, are needed to burn out entire enemy fortified areas in places remote from residential areas, and their appearance at the front has already been noted.
At the moment, the caliber of Russian precision-guided munitions is limited to 20-kilogram bombs. However, the Belarusian colleagues of the Russian defense industry went further and began creating smart bombs KAB-05 and UPAB-08, weighing 5 kg and 8 kg respectively. You can also recall the Turkish MAM-C ammunition weighing 8,5 kg.
Such a low weight will allow them to be used from large copters (analogues of Baba Yaga) or, for example, from Orlan-30. That is, use high-precision ammunition from a high altitude behind enemy lines from more inconspicuous carriers that do not require a prepared runway.
Today it is known that several hundred winged bombs fly at the enemy every day. But so far it has only been possible locally to achieve the required concentration of fire using this type of weapon (for example, in Avdeevka up to 460 bombs per day).
The number of bomb carriers with UMPC, the ability to use up to 6 bombs simultaneously from each carrier and carry out 3-4 combat sorties per day, allows you to increase the frequency of use to at least a thousand bombs per day. This is usually what happens in major conflicts involving NATO aircraft.
Russian aviation is not yet able to operate over the entire enemy territory, even at high altitudes. Using several dozen gliding FABs per day, the VKS turned in our favor the enemy’s superiority in attacks on the near rear along the LBS, which he received in the summer of 2022 due to Western high-precision shells for the MLRS.
Having started using several hundred FABs per day, our troops at the end of 2023 - beginning of 2024 were able to significantly increase the role of aviation in the conflict.
Despite the fact that today's Russian laser-guided or wire-guided ATGMs are almost perfect, this still does not mean that there is no need for Third-generation ATGM based on the fire-and-forget principle. The Russian army still needs an ATGM with a smart infrared thermal seeker (the same Javelin, Spike) to reduce the risks for the operators of the complex and more accurately hit it in conditions of limited visibility of the target on the part of the operators.
As for improving small air-to-surface missiles, the Americans proposed a rather interesting idea, creating a modification of the popular Hellfire missile called AGM-114R9X. It implements kinetic warhead in the absence of an explosive, specially designed for the precise elimination of the enemy without harm to others. Such a missile will not cope with a tank, but it can disable an unarmored vehicle of Ukrainian Nazis if there are a large number of civilians nearby in dense urban areas, without causing any shrapnel wounds in passers-by, or shell shock, or damage to buildings.
The main advantage of the promising complex "Hermes" The advantage of "Tornado-S" or HIMARS is the ability to use it both at long distances along a ballistic trajectory, and at close distances along a straight trajectory as a conventional ATGM. Such versatility is also in great demand today on the line of contact.
Air-to-surface missiles with television-command thermal imaging seeker at the moment they are the most accurate aviation weapons for hitting the enemy at a great distance from the front line (LMUR, thermal imaging modifications X-59, X-69, X-29, X-38). They gained such fame primarily due to the ability not only to be guaranteed to hit a large object the first time under the control of an operator, but also to a separate part of this object or even a specific window.
Taking into account the scale of the air defense system, there is an acute shortage of this type of weapons, as well as, in principle, any other means of hitting the deep rear (including loitering ammunition mentioned in the first section, sea- and air-based missiles, ballistic and hypersonic missiles).
The Ukrainian group is not currently experiencing major difficulties on the front line due to attacks on military and dual-use targets in central and western Ukraine. These attacks may have a certain demoralizing factor, but are not able to significantly deteriorate logistics, stop Western supplies, deprive the enemy of the opportunity to form and train new units in the rear, accumulate forces for breakthrough attempts, create fortified areas, produce and repair military equipment in small batches. That is, for now the bulk of the Ukrainian army is being crushed directly on the front line, and not in the rear.
The most underrated precision-guided ammunition in the Northern Military District was ammunition with self-aiming cluster elements. But in vain, because this is a very effective way to burn entire columns of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and only a swarm of autonomous “kamikaze” drones can compete with this.
Due to the fact that aviation does not have the ability to drop RBC-500SPBE-D over the LBS, there is a need for the safe delivery of self-aiming elements to the rear. The already developed Drel glide bomb with a range of 70 km and 15 self-aiming ammunition, as well as the Tornado-S high-precision ammunition - Motiv-3M with three self-aiming elements (range 90 km) can come to the rescue. Production of "Dreli" is only planned for this year, and "Motiv-3M" was first used in November 2023 near Avdeevka.
The year 2024 should be decisive in this war.
Despite the fact that at the first stages our army was not fully prepared for such a large-scale military conflict, today we are seeing extremely positive changes.
The domestic military-industrial complex has already demonstrated that it can compete on equal terms with NATO in the production of a number of classic weapons systems and ammunition, surpassing the enemy in many ways.
Our soldiers have shown that they can learn quickly on the battlefield. They not only adapt to new types of warfare, but also impose them, heroically carrying out their tasks.
The above weapons systems should finally break the trend of war of attrition and make it possible to carry out deep, quick breakthroughs at the front, avoiding prolonged frontal attacks and without waiting for the enemy to naturally run out of ammunition.
The future of the Russian Army still lies not in increasing the number of personnel, but in complex, autonomous high-precision weapons. What the enemy has today in the form of “cartoons” is guaranteed to be encountered on the battlefield tomorrow, and we must get ahead of them.
The Cold War will not end in Ukraine. It will cover all continents and periodically go into hot phases, for which Russia must be more than 100 percent ready.
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